© Lynn Hershman Leeson
8 rooms in Performer and Participant
How do you perform your identity? The artists in this room reflect on how gender and identity are constructed and enacted: a kind of performance of the self
Artists have used portraiture throughout history to explore themselves and the world around them. Rather than being documented by others, artists are creating representations of themselves and their communities, taking ownership of their image. They can empower the subjects whilst countering white, heteronormative, able-bodied images often found in art institutions and mass media. Perhaps you identify with these images or see parts of yourself in the subjects. If we take a closer look at ourselves, can we better understand those around us?
We construct our appearance through signs and symbols – the clothes we wear, our hairstyles and our gestures. The works in this room draw attention to these traits which are often read as signs of our identity – those that make us part of a collective or define us as individuals. These artists use photography, video and painting to highlight this performance of gender and self. Looking at these works reveals the performative aspect of everyday life.
Lyle Ashton Harris, Constructs #10 - #13 1989
Harris strikes four different poses. His stance and gestures might remind us of classical sculpture or ballet, his hand on his hip, or his feet extending out as if in a ballet position, the large net bow reminiscent of a tutu. Harris has said he has used self-portraiture since the 1980s ‘as a tool for embodiment, to reimagine the self while looking at the past, to meditate on the present as a way to conceptualize the future and rethink our understanding of identity.’ Made at the height of the AIDS pandemic, Constructs #10 – #13 was for Harris ‘almost an aggressive assertion of sex-positiveness... it was about challenging the policing of the... queer black body.’
Gallery label, November 2022
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artworks in Performing Genders, Performing Selves
Ulay, Soliloquy, from the series Renais sense 1973
Soliloquy 1973 and S’he 1973–4 are two self-portraits of Ulay in costume that blends both masculine and feminine traits. They belong to Renais sense, a series of self-portraits made in the early 1970s, in which he created an alter ego to explore gender expression. His work reflects how artists have used performance and fictional characters to explore their inner selves and larger questions around gender and identity.
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artworks in Performing Genders, Performing Selves
Ulay, S’He 1973
The photographs in the Renais sense series were originally shot as Polaroids. Ulay described these early self-portraits as ‘Auto-Polaroids’, spontaneous actions made specifically for the camera which allowed him to experiment with his idea of ‘the self’ as complex and permanently under construction. He said, ‘Taking Polaroids was a performative act for me: I performed in front of the camera. These were intimate actions, carried out in the absence of a live audience, ephemeral in nature, yet arrested in time.’
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artworks in Performing Genders, Performing Selves
Lynn Hershman Leeson, Roberta Construction Chart #1 1975, printed 2009
Lynn Hershman Leeson created, performed and documented an alter ego, Roberta Breitmore from 1973 to 1978 to ‘focus on the blurriness between fiction and reality’. During her four-year existence, Roberta Breitmore had a bank account and library card, rented an apartment and went on dates. She did not plan for the character to be so developed but ‘when you start to define how you make somebody real, she needs to be fleshed out and have a history.’ Roberta Construction Chart #1 gives detailed instructions on how to create Roberta’s appearance. It doubles as a visualisation of ‘femininity as masquerade’, highlighting the tropes and traits that tend to be associated with femininity.
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artworks in Performing Genders, Performing Selves
Lynn Hershman Leeson, Roberta’s Body Language Chart 1978; printed 2009
In Roberta’s Body Language Chart, Leeson’s alter ego, Roberta Breitmore is photographed during a real psychiatric session. The annotations interpret her gestures and postures. Leeson carefully constructed Roberta’s character: ‘She had a different background. She was younger than I was. She went to therapy because she was broke and lonely and kept having negative experiences.’ Eventually Roberta began to blur the lines between performance, alter ego, and the artist’s everyday life: ‘In fact, she’s more real than I am, because I couldn’t get credit cards, and I couldn’t get other artifacts of life and the records that she easily acquired. So for me, it was kind of just living her life.’
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artworks in Performing Genders, Performing Selves
Lynn Hershman Leeson, Untitled (Roberta’s Signature in Guest Book) 1975
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artworks in Performing Genders, Performing Selves
Lynn Hershman Leeson, Check 1974
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artworks in Performing Genders, Performing Selves
Laura Aguilar, Clothed/Unclothed #24 1991
Aguilar explained, ‘My work is a collaboration between the sitters and myself... Hopefully the universal elements in the work can be recognised by other individuals’ communities and can initiate the viewer to new experiences about gays, lesbians, and people of color.’ For the artist, the viewer ‘is as vulnerable as the nude person because as they view the images, they are hopefully seeing images of themselves.’
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artworks in Performing Genders, Performing Selves
Laura Aguilar, Clothed/Unclothed #4 1990
Clothed/Unclothed #4 and #34 depict the photographer, artist and social activist Willie Middlebrook 1957–2012, a friend of Aguilar’s, solo and with his two children.
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artworks in Performing Genders, Performing Selves
Laura Aguilar, Clothed/Unclothed #14 1991
Clothed/Unclothed #14 shows the academic Luz Calvo, first in jeans and shirt, and then naked with a sticker across their genitals stating ‘FUCK YOUR GENDER. QUEER NATION’. Queer Nation is an LGBTQIA activist organisation founded in 1990 in New York City, known for its confrontational tactics and slogans giving visibility to people identifying as queer. ‘Fuck your gender’ works both as a rallying cry against traditional gender roles and as a playful invitation to engage in queer encounters.
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artworks in Performing Genders, Performing Selves
Laura Aguilar, Clothed/Unclothed #28 1994
Aguilar shows us how the camera can be used to imagine different ways of being. Her images specifically counter white, heteronormative, able-bodied images of women that proliferate. As a Chicana photographer and video artist, Aguilar used the camera to explore herself and the intersection of Chicanx, Latinx, immigrant and queer communities in Los Angeles in the 1980s and 1990s.
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artworks in Performing Genders, Performing Selves
Laura Aguilar, Clothed/Unclothed #30 1994
Aguilar often turned the camera on herself to explore her identity, exposing her own vulnerabilities and inner conflicts. She extended this sensitivity to the people she photographed, portraying their vulnerable and intimate sides while retaining a direct and candid quality, even when carefully constructed in the studio. The series Clothed/Unclothed 1990–4 show people from Aguilar’s social circles, including the LGBTQIA community, the Chicanx art community, academics and other professionals in Los Angeles. She collaborated with her sitters to explore universal themes around the construction and representation of identity that relate to queer forms of community and kinship.
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artworks in Performing Genders, Performing Selves
Laura Aguilar, Clothed/Unclothed #34 1994
Foregrounding care and trust in her art practice, Aguilar created collaborative and reciprocal relationships with her sitters. Rejecting traditional family portraiture, the subjects remain intertwined as they hold our gaze. Bodies are close and connected, both clothed and unclothed, revealing their deep connection as a unit.
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artworks in Performing Genders, Performing Selves
Nash Glynn, Self Portrait with One Foot Forward and One Hand Reaching Out 2020
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artworks in Performing Genders, Performing Selves
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